


miles to go before we sleep

by lyricalprose (fairylights)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode Tag, Episode: s06e06 You Can't Handle The Truth, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-18
Updated: 2013-07-18
Packaged: 2017-12-20 13:43:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/887943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairylights/pseuds/lyricalprose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam is on the floor, and Dean has blood on his hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	miles to go before we sleep

  
Sam's groaning on the ground, face swelling rapidly and fresh gashes bleeding.  
  
Dean has blood on his hands and it isn't his. He can feel it, warm and sticky on his fingers, wet and filmy underneath his fingernails. He's shaking and Sam's moaning, soft and pained and confused and he – can't.  
  
He turns on his heel and bolts, runs up the stairs and out through the too-clean living room, shoes squeaking on the polished marble floors. He's going so fast that he almost trips on one of the fucking cats that are _everywhere_ in this place.  
  
Dean pushes open the front door and sucks in a breath of cold midnight air, lets it rush into his lungs too fast, hard and painful like a punch to the chest. He keeps running all the way to the car, dead leaves and gravel cracking and shifting under his feet as he moves across them too quickly.  
  
He reaches out for the car like it's driftwood and he's drowning, scrabbling for the handle on the driver's side and sinking into the seat behind the wheel in a motion that's nearly as familiar as breathing, and just as ingrained.  
  
He doesn't take the keys out of his pocket, because there's nowhere to go.  
  
It's too quiet and too cold, the crisp October night seeping inside the car, hardening the leather of the seats and giving the metal an icy finish. The only noise is his breathing, still heavy and labored from the dash out of the house and just warm enough to be visible in the air.  
  
He feels completely _alone_ in a way that he hasn't since he sat in a dark room and stared at Sam's dead body on a dirty mattress, cold and pale and _gone_ for the first time. No hope. No options. No fucking clue which way was up in a world without Sam.  
  
Except then he could still stand at a crossroads with his heart buried in the dirt, knowing that it would do _something._ He'd like to be able to do that again, he thinks. Bargain, barter, deal, die, whatever it takes to see Sam, his Sam, the real Sam.  
  
But mostly he wants to be twelve years old again, sitting next to Sam in the backseat of the car, sharing a bag of Funyuns and poking each other in the side until Dad tells them to knock it the hell off. He wants to be seventeen and lighting fireworks in a field in Nebraska, twenty-one and drunk off his ass with his brother in Mississippi, twenty-eight and watching the stars from the hood of the Impala in Maine.  
  
He wants _home,_ and if that can't be Lisa and Ben and apple pie then it's not anywhere other than right here where he's sitting.  
  
Except it's not home without Sam.  
  
Lisa's voice, soft but angry, is ringing in his head – _you push everything down_ – and it fucking feels like it's all coming back up, like the contents of his stomach after a really bad night. He's taking deep, choking breaths, trying to push it all back, but it's like fighting a spring back into place.  
  
Dean curls his fingers around the steering wheel, digs his fingernails into the leather and grits his teeth. He wipes a red-stained hand across his face, so far beyond pretending that tears aren't mixing with the blood.  
  
He opens the driver's side door and goes back for Sam.


End file.
